The Surgeon's Studio

Anxiety plagued Cen Meng as he repeatedly looked at the time on his phone.

He had been imagining the perioperative procedures ever since his uncle was pushed into the operating theater.

As far as he knew about Zheng Ren… Of course, given recent events, the incision and drainage of acute obstructive suppurative cholangitis should have been finished within an hour.

There was nothing difficult about it, after all.

The minutes ticked by and when it reached the fiftieth minute, he started texting his second aunt on WeChat.

Cen Meng instantly felt uneasy upon hearing that his uncle was still in the operating theater.

Had something gone wrong with the surgery? Did Zheng Ren catch wind that the patient was actually his uncle and deliberately delayed it?

Cen Meng’s heart sank immediately.

Chief Surgeon Liu was a pessimist who had told Cen Meng many drunken stories.

Perhaps Chief Surgeon Liu was an alarmist or had committed countless wrongdoings, but the man always had a guilty conscience and saw things fanatically. This issue had actually become a thorn in Cen Meng’s flesh as he was constantly worried that one day, he would make the same mistakes.

‘My attitude toward Zheng Ren previously… wasn’t so bad, right?’ The further Cen Meng went down memory lane, the greater his fear, and his fingers trembled uncontrollably.

The very thought made Cen Meng’s blood boil.

However, he became dispirited almost immediately upon recalling the obstacles he had put in Zheng Ren’s path, sending a chill down his spine. The false earthquake… Letting Zheng Ren stay for abdominal surgical wound closure… Postoperative punishment and the attempt to fire him… Was there any difference between these and murdering his father or abducting his wife?

Had karma found him at last?

He started regretting his initial decision. He should have just requested Chief Surgeon Sun from the second general surgery department to perform the operation instead.

Five minutes later, Cen Meng called his classmate immediately after confirming that the surgery was still ongoing. There was nothing wrong with asking an anesthesiologist to check on the progress of the surgery, right?

Cen Meng was rational enough to prevent himself from making a decision that would make him regret living.

At the sixty-eighth minute, Cen Meng’s classmate entered the emergency operating theater.

Soon, he received a shocking photograph.

There were countless white silk-like parasites wiggling in the kidney dish. They were so fresh that adding chopped green onions and stir-frying them would make a delectable dish.

It had been… a rare obstructive jaundice secondary to parasitic infection?!

How did Zheng Ren take all these parasites out alive?

Cen Meng’s medical standard was similar to the ordinary doctors of Xinglin Garden, perhaps even inferior to them.

More than a thousand viewers had approximated the truth after half an hour of discussion. How could Cen Meng even come close?

“Cen Meng, asking Chief Zheng to perform this surgery was indeed a wise decision,” Cen Meng’s classmate replied via text message.

The compliment would have given Cen Meng hypertension and exasperation had he not seen the white silk-like parasites in the kidney dish.

However, the parasites quietly reminded Cen Meng that his classmate was absolutely right. He did not even understand how Zheng Ren had performed the surgery.

Cen Meng’s phone suddenly rang and as soon as he answered the call, there was an anxious, crying voice. “Meng’zi, how is your uncle? You ungrateful child, how could you be so cruel? Your uncle treats you so well, but you didn’t even check on the progress of his surgery.”

“Aunt, he has a special condition and it’s going to take a while before the surgery can be finished.” Cen Meng buried his dejection deep within his heart and tried to comfort his second aunt, who was on the verge of a breakdown.

“What special condition?!” Cen Meng flinched at the acidity in his second aunt’s voice.

“Uncle has eaten way too much Japanese food and there are parasites residing in his gallbladder now. Doctor Zheng is removing them one by one, so it’s going to take a long time. Aunt, don’t worry.” Cen Meng then hung up and sent the photograph, a nightmare for trypophobic people, to his second aunt via WeChat.

There were too many parasites and he presumed that complete removal would take at least three hours.

Cen Meng felt slightly dazed and absent-mindedly went to the rooftop to get some cold air.

The wind was strong and cool, but failed to extinguish the fire that burned within his heart.

‘I must become stronger! I mustn’t return home and become a farmer!’ The obsession remained embedded in Cen Meng’s mind.

His perturbation and anger was a wake-up call for Cen Meng. It was better not to seek quick success by any means, otherwise… The gusty wind on the rooftop sent an unexpected shudder through him.

His phone suddenly rang again. The surgery had been going on for one hour and forty-one minutes. His second aunt must be distressed by now.

Cen Meng sighed and answered it.

“Meng’zi, the surgery is complete. Come and help me transfer your uncle back to the ward.” His second aunt’s tone was filled with boundless joy. It seemed like his uncle’s postoperative general anesthesia recovery was very good and he could already engage in conversation.

Cen Meng was dumbfounded.

The surgery was finished within one hour and forty-one minutes? That was fast!

How did Zheng Ren perform it so quickly?

If it had just been “simple” obstructive cholangitis, Cen Meng believed that the man could finish it within ninety minutes.

However, that was excluding the time for anesthesia to take effect and postoperative anesthesia recovery.

The surgery would take more than two and a half hours if every factor was taken into account.

Even so… Complete parasite removal from the common bile duct and common hepatic duct in just one hour and forty-one minutes… Was this a brand new surgical technique?

It was definitely a new procedure that could hasten the surgical process. Who exactly was Zheng Ren? Subconsciously, he realized Zheng Ren had become far more skillful than he could ever be.

Dispirited, shocked and puzzled, Cen Meng did not hang up and allowed his second aunt to continue the conversation.

…

…

The surgery livestream had ended in Xinglin Garden.

A few attentive viewers calculated that 296 parasites had been removed within one hour and five minutes.

Most doctors were meticulous and had various kinds of obsessive-compulsive disorders. A tedious task such as counting worms… someone would still do it quietly.

After parasite removal had been completed, the surgery once again traveled back to earth, a place all surgeons were familiar with.

The equipment was then removed, rinsed and reintroduced to the duodenum for thorough exploration. After that, a #22 T Tube was placed in the common bile duct before peritoneal cavity irrigation and abdominal surgical wound closure.

Everything was performed accordingly and looked “simple”.

Numerous accounts continued to log in and enter the live broadcast room until the end of the operation. Once the surgery had officially ended, comments finally started to unscrupulously flood the live broadcast room.

It caused another wave of traffic overload, which shocked all the staff of Xinglin Garden.

Fortunately, the surgery ended early. From the peak viewer count of 10020 viewers in the live broadcast room, the staff were glad that nothing serious had happened.

No one discussed the new surgical technique during the madness near the end as it was simply incomprehensible. Viewers merely bombarded the room to express their deepest respect and admiration for the host surgeon.

…

…

Peng Jia began paying more attention to the anonymous account after another near-overload of Xinglin Garden. He had initially planned on investigating the account but had decided against it after a few moments of hesitation.

If any mogul was trying to achieve something through this, it would be disastrous if he knew too much about it.

However, staring at the data handed over by a technician, he ruminated for a while and then said, “Check its location.”

Two hours and fourteen minutes later, the technician sent him an email stating that the signal had gone through various channels but the source had been located after a painstaking investigation—Montreal Medical Center, one of the top five medical centers in Canada.

Strangely enough, after the signal had been traced, the target seemed disgusted and had retaliated with a powerful virus, which caused the website to enter a half-paralyzed state that it was still in.

There was one sentence left at the end—Don’t reply, don’t reply, don’t reply.

Er… Peng Jia was stunned.

Medical practitioners knew how to play around with computer viruses too?

How ridiculous!